OF THE RHINE.

VI.--SHALL AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?

My first dinner in the avenue of Ettlingen followed upon the
twelve-barreled bath, but was far from being so glacial a,
refreshment. As I descended, quite pink and glowing, I found eight or
ten individuals in the dining-room. They were French and Belgians, and
exchanged a lively conversation in half a dozen provincial accents.
The servants too talked French in levying on the cook for provisions:
for this, as I have since learned, the domestics of my snug little
boarding-house were deemed somewhat pretentious by the serving-people
of the vicinity, who considered the tongue of Paris a sort of court
language, for circulation among aristocrats only, and supposed that
even in France the hired folk all talked German. My reception at the
cheerful board was as cordial as possible.

[Illustration: THE REGISTER.]

Placed opposite me, our young hostess was looking in my direction with
an intentness that struck me as singular. My passport was uppermost in
my mind. I was not, however, very uneasy, for the reply of Sylvester
Berkley would soon arrive and put an official seal upon my standing.
It occurred to me, however, that I was a traveler accompanied by no
other baggage than a tin box and an umbrella, and introduced by a
coachman who had no reason whatever for forming lofty notions of my
respectability. The landlady, whom I had scarcely seen on my arrival,
was pretty, neat and quick, and an argument suggested itself that
seemed adapted to her station and habits. I was base enough to take
out my watch, a very fine Poitevin, and make an advertisement of that
pledge under pretence of comparing time with the mantel-clock. This
precious manoeuvre appeared quite successful.

Very soon my ideas of apprehension and defiance were followed by other
thoughts of a very different kind. The expression of the youthful
housekeeper was not only softened in continuing to watch me, but
it took on a look of great kindness and good-humor--a look that the
finest watch in the world would never have inspired. On my own side
I furtively examined this gentle yet scrutinizing physiognomy.
Surely those gentle glances and my own faded old eyes were not entire
strangers.

When Winckelmann was filling the villa Albani with antiques, it
often happened to him to clasp a fair Greek head in his arms and go
pottering along from torso to torso till he could find a shoulder fit
to support his lovely bur